Tag: contextual

What I understand as walking (notes)

Springgay/Truman (2018) Walking Methodologies in chapter on inclusion are good with movement:

what they mean, what is conscious, directed; what is intuitive: absolute and relative>> this relates also to participation (and the problem of inclusion); which in itself is precisely why my stuff isn’t Bourriard.
<< it relates to Manning’s minor gesture; but perhaps Harney/Moten on hapticality are better suited?
<< there is a naivety in new materialism: the vitalism is exactly the problem that the Critical Materialism identifies as vulgar materialism.
So:
— Springgay/Truman propose: land + geos, affect, transmateriality and movement as new developments of focus in walking methodology/research.
Movement then supersedes Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis
Nomadic ethics of Braidotti are clearly strongly informed by Deleuze… I think that frame and background is good and resonates with how I work in processwork so this may be a good way to link that working practice (which in turn informed my artistic work, also in the line) to academic material. (see blog here: https://close-open.net/2021/04/28/nomadic-thought-and-transversalism-research-folder/)

But: then, what I have done is use this to transverse, move across spacetime and site/location: analogue/digital; fiction/non-fiction; gossip/sincere argument.
>> there is something in this that then takes the movement further (and arguably considers nomadic theory or hybridity as the constitution across << I mean, in some ways it challenges the notion of virtual space being virtual, non-haptic, non-moving
There is clearly something in the contemplation, stillness of Green that I try to garner, make use of (and in some way it proposes a counter-move to walking art).

Re violence, there are a number of issues that take argument with the flaneur and what he can do… that is a relatively simple route to follow.
Am I doing something else beyond that though?

<< the secrecy, reveal, moving stories and accounts along.

Much of my work in Drawing 2 explored this (see this link for movement in that module’s blog: https://investigatingdrawinggh.wordpress.com/?s=movement), the talk in Prespes (July 2019) and the subsequent publication articulated this in writing (see MS here: https://close-open.net/2019/10/26/moving-with-a-line-gossip-secrets-a-messenger-app/).

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Immersiveness (complications) > research folder

A draft post which looked like this has existed for almost a year. It arose around the conversations during BoW tutorials around immersion, the sensorial and audience engagement with site and work.

The discussion linked forward and into BoW 4 and 5 and Research 4 also. How to invite, entice, lure the viewer into the work, inviting them to step forward, and then to get a little lost, not quite knowing where they stepped into.

In conversations that ensued, I wondered if the work needed to be seductive to achieve this: the luring was close enough to entrapment, of overwhelming with the (visual) senses. And I realised that I myself stepped right back at that moment.

Pippilotti Rist’s (2005) Homo Sapiens Sapiens video installation at Garden of Earthly Delights (you lie back onto floor cushions, the projection happens on the ceiling in a round shape), came to my mind and that my work was not like that (and didn’t intend to).

I was surprised by my strong reactions here and further discussions with my Research tutor clarified some of the links about it (immersion = seduction = overwhelm = entrapment). It also clarified for me that HD video on large/multiple screens is not where my intention of the kinds of work I want to make lies (I think it’s been a no for some time, being invited to spend £10k for a digital back for a MF camera) — I am too little photographer for these approaches.

The works I turned to were these three — I have known them for a long time, they are datable, and dated as late 20c British contemporary art. I find myself however returning them at frequent intervals:

Bethan Huws (1991) The Lake Writing or The Lake Piece, 24 works on paper, ink, each 297x210mm.

Georgina Starr (1992) Whistle (Eddy, photography and Whistle, vinyl 7” record); installation, dimensions variable, https://georginastarr.com/eddyforwhistle1992STARR.htm, accessed 20 August 2021.

Gillian Wearing (1994) Dancing in Peckham, video, 25 mins, https://youtu.be/lQqZj7DhRzQ, accessed 20 August 2021.

None of them is immersive in the way immersion is currently understood as a multimedia surround environment where the view steps in. Huws’s photocopied handwritten notes on walking around a lake are in fact anything but: it is formally sparse, daringly challenging the notion of the artist’s hand (or tech) and yet affording a slow stepping into a sensorial and experiential register which affords precisely that transfer, transporting the viewer/reader around that lake with her, if they let themselves be seduced by 80gsm photocopy paper spaced on a white gallery wall (that I was told the visit was animated by a large open window that moved the sheets on the wall on a summer afternoon in London, helped further). Wearing’s silent disco before there was such a thing is of a similar register, here we don’t know what she is dancing too, the noisy VHS recording clipped to youtube dates it further. Starr’s eddies on Kings Cross station translated to her whistle tune recorded on vinyl is similarly introverted, marked by an innocuous act in public space (like Wearing and Huws also).

They are all fairly ordinary approaches towards making and then the act of transferring, translating moves the terrain and makes them extraordinary with simple means compared to the immersion at play today. They also are playful (both in production and in presentation), there is a trickster at play, a playing with the expectations of audience and curators. They are also quite introverted works, I come to realise now: they are solitary activities, contemplative, a couple a bit performative, while the headphones kind of temper the level of exposure.

None seduces, none overwhelms, yet they stay with me as a way of translating, relating environmental experiences of making (with/in) site that are effective and relevant to how I am engaging with site. I hope these will provide further inspiration as I move towards SYP and the concerns over audience engagement.

Oh, yes: the link to the haptic and the erotic in Marks: it lies again in the autonomy and ability to negotiate coming close and pulling away: of diving in and dissolution and then to surface and step out. The choice for one or the other is key here (what that means for the initial idea of letting people peer in and they get a little surprised what they discover remains to be revisited).